MINNEAPOLIS — A man is facing two felony drug charges after the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport Police Department intercepted a package containing nearly 5 lbs. of fentanyl last week.
According to court documents, on Halloween, officers were doing parcel interdiction at a UPS shipping facility at the airport when they spotted a "suspicious parcel" from San Bernadino, California, addressed to an Uptown Minneapolis apartment building on the 2300 block of Garfield Ave. They say the parcel didn't include a unit number and was only addressed to the initials A.H.M. instead of a full name.
A drug detection dog then conducted a sniff test and provided a positive alert, prompting officers to obtain a warrant to open the parcel. That's when they found the nearly 5 lbs. of fentanyl.
This is positive news to Dr. Alta DeRoo, the chief medical officer for addiction treatment organization Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation.
"Even though we are on the treatment side, we hear a lot from folks about how they get their fentanyl or how it became an issue for them," DeRoos said. "Often, it is this illicit fentanyl that comes in through our ports of entry."
Five lbs. is a little over 2 kg, and DeRoo says 1 kg of fentanyl is enough to kill 500,000 people.
"If it's 2 kg, that's almost a million people that have been saved by this interception of these drugs," she said.
DeRoo says fentanyl is typically pressed into pills and falsely sold as other drugs such as Adderall. It's also cut into cocaine and marijuana, she says.
Court documents say the morning after the parcel was discovered, undercover cops conducted a "controlled delivery" by placing the parcel on the apartment's front steps and waiting to see who would collect it. However, the parcel contained a smaller sample of 106 grams of fentanyl.
Sure enough, a man later identified as Eduardo Santillan-Rivera, 24, got out of a black sedan and picked up the parcel. On his way back to the car, officers detained him.
Charging documents say Santillan-Rivera first said he was trying to steal the package but later admitted he was getting paid to move the package by a Mexican drug trafficking organization, and that it wasn't his first delivery. Rivera also reportedly indicated a desire to return home to Mexico.
The 24-year-old is currently in Hennepin County Jail on a $200,000 bond. He had his first court appearance this week and his next hearing is scheduled for Nov. 25.
"Kudos to the Minneapolis Airport Police that intercepted this," DeRoo said. "I mean, that's just such a huge gift to our community."